From Seattle to Seattle, Inbetweenisode #15 covers a tea sourced from Washington-based pu’erh specialist Crimson Lotus Tea. This is a more humidly-stored tea and is a good example of an early Changtai production and Xishuangbanna storage. Big thanks to Brian who sent this tea our way!

That’s a good point. Everything gets confused when westernized. In this case the Chinese character for ‘shu’ is ‘蜀’. This is an old nickname for Sichuan Province which is near Yunnan in the Southwest of China. As for the other two characters: yuan: ‘远’ and nian: ‘年’. yuan / ‘远’ means ‘far away’; far away distance or time. Nian / ‘年’ means ‘year’. Together yuan nian / ‘远年’ means ‘Ancient’. All together yuan nian shu / 远年蜀 can be translated as Ancient Southwest.